Enterprise Technology Thought Leadership in a FTSE 100
I first started coding at the age of 10 on a Commodore Vic 20. Last week I finally un-installed Visual Studio 2003 on my laptop because I need the space and I never touch it. It was sad admitting that I don't code and my role does not require me to. If I did find myself coding then I probably shouldn't because there is so much else to do and we have more than a few guys and girls that will happily do the job and only a couple doing EA. Yep, I get the argument that a good architect should have more ......
Microsoft have release a really cool tool for downloading and reading the Architecture Journal magazine offline. The new reader is a locally installed application that enables you to read every issue of the Journal into a searchable and easy-to-read form. The application synchronizes with our content management services so that you'll automatically have access to the latest Journal issues without needing to download PDF files or checking online. Please note the tool is still in Beta so there is bound ......
Thanks to iStartedSomething blog for these pictures and write-ups. Microsoft Oxygen concept desktop system that converts from typical use mode, to media viewing, to pen input. Microsoft Zinc concept intended for countertop use. Microsoft Carbon concept micro PC with high object value. Microsoft Argon concept entertainment biased all-in-one PC. Microsoft Cobalt convertible notebook/tablet system. All I can say is that they are gorgeous! Certainly give the old Mac a run for it's money in the cool stakes. ......
It’s pretty clear that ‘Enterprise Architecture’ and ‘Enterprise Architect’ is considerably more than one role. As such the practice of EA isn’t very efficient because it is a ‘jack of multiple disciplines and master of none’. Naturally specialisms will occur to make up for inefficiencies and will then continue to adapt and evolve. During this process I can also see a consensus on what these new roles will be called and a broad definition and responsibilities, this will occur as we try to find people ......
I've just caught up the latest installment in the " 'To Process' or 'Not To Process' " debate that has become a blogger slanging match between James McGovern, Robert McIlree and James Robertson played out in the comments sections and blog posts. To summarise the debate has moved on from whether EA is just a set of processes or whether it's a practice. My pitch was that it's actually both and applied appropriately. So a debate about direction and ethos. So a pointless opportunity for procrastination? ......
Every now and again you come across a real gem of a find and www.liteEA.com is one of them! It's pretty obvious that John Chi-Zong Wu has spent quite a considerable amount of time putting together this amazing EA resource! The book section is the most impressive, it literally is a 'how-to' on EA and I've only scratched the surface and it's already been very useful! Do you know what I find surprising? The site counter has only 2369 visits! Which means this is pretty much an undiscovered resource that ......
Microsoft's Nick Malik has written a thought provoking piece on understanding the customer and how EA should rise to the challenge of aligning Business and IT be focusing on the customer needs. Essentially, I agree with the sentiment whoever i disagree on a couple of huge monster key points ... 1) I don't believe that the average customer is that tech-savvy! Yep, they dabble and it's enough to get by, but code up mash-ups ... are you joking? Seriously? I can see how Microsoft's vision of the world ......
I like many people now use Linked-In as my primary source of business contact information, it’s not ideal as I am concern about my privacy and am I really feeding some kind of great big marketing machine? However it is fantastically useful for keeping track of people as they move around. One of the primary reasons why you have a person as a business contact in the first place is because of the role they currently occupy. When that person moves roles, your link to that role has been lost. A classic ......
The UK HMRC third breach in security this year is the biggest. This BBC new reports holds the details. Why are such large amounts of personal data sent around government on unencrypted CD's? Why can't the NAO perform audits in Government departments? Just because there is no evidence of criminal activity why aren't people getting new personal details? This is unbelievable and criminally inexcusable. What can the Government do now to restore our confidence? Get the computer systems fixed and stop ......
... only if the rank and file users are pretty tech savvy! This week my colleagues and I have been experimenting with Wiki's to find one that we could use in an initiative to capture the corporate memory. What we discovered was that most Wiki's have a pretty low level of intuitions at key points. For example inserting images, creating simply hierarchal structures and simple navigation. Now I appreciate that many have a reasonable text editors so users don't have to use tags but this just seems to ......
BI has always been a rich vain of the IT industry. Rich because there was so much excellent competition. The really cool thing about many BI products was that they effectively could bolt onto most of the popular databases so it was pretty straight forward to chop and change and to also build your capability into one tool! The larger IT vendors however where not leaders in the BI space. The leader were the specialists, the experts. Now sadly the bigger BI vendors and market leaders are nearly all ......
It is becoming common practice to build up the content of an Enterprise Architecture over time. Because an EA is highly dependent on feedback to grow it takes a lot of continued time and investment to constantly refine the content of an EA so it grows into being a genuinely useful and ingrained into the organisation. The best tactic is to engulf the organisation with EA overtime. It is a long game not a ‘Pot-Noodle’. Therefore a sensible approach would be to version as an effort to change control. ......
John McGovern and Robert Mcilree have fired off the latest salvo in one of EA's biggest and most maddening debates. In short the debate is about whether Enterprise Architecture is a process or practice? Maddening? Why! Because common sense has the answer and I'm surprised at the heavy weights in EA not realising that. Toyota is often hailed as the example of how processes have got the company to be a world leader in automobile manufacture. RBS and ODP diagrams that document processes and the processes ......
I first came across the phase “Foundation of Execution” after reading the book Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, Harvard Business School Press which was recommended by my colleague Andrew Galletly. Foundation of Execution simply means the automation of routine business tasks. Doing this allows people to concentrate on improving the business rather than just purely running it. Does this sound obvious? Well yes! So often the link between a good company and a bad one is this realisation and agressively ......
Rich Seeley recently interviewed John Michelsen, chief scientist at iTKO Inc who said ... "the service-oriented architecture (SOA) testing and governance provider, believes developers do not have to chose between Web-oriented architecture (WOA) based on a simple Representational State Transfer (REST) approach and SOA following the WS-* standards. "It's not an either/or question," he says in the following interview from Integration World 2007 this week in Orlando, Florida. However, he does argue that ......
Thanks to James McGovern for the original posting of these statistics. Thank you Microsoft for the transparency. Microsoft internal IT: 600k connected devices 10,000 Servers 3 Datacenters 1 operations center 11% is virtualized in Microsoft Datacenters 330 of 385 servers run Windows Server 2008 (RC0) plus all 85 Microsoft.com servers 11 clustered systems 30,000 users in Redmond domain (50,000 with vendors) NAP reporting 140K clients, 90 clients deferred mode The Redmond Active Directory domain is ......
The place to be in Tech on the 1st April 2008 will be the Royal Albert Hall, London, UK for the Technology of Tomorrow 2008 Seminar. The speakers announced already is a formidable list of who's who in Tech, Sir Richard Branson Carly Fiorina Steve Wozniak Jimmy Wales Ben Verwaayen John Swainson Alfred Chuang Peter Guber Harpal Kumar The event is specifically aimed at decision makers in IT and is not free, tickets start at £611 and can be purchased from here. I don't think this is to much to ask to ......
Last week I was lucky enough to meet Charles Edwards of ProcessWave Limited who introduced me to an Open Source project that he is collaborating on called Agile EA. In a nutshell, Agile EA isn’t another EA methodology but a set of best practices and processes put together from experiences in the field. Agile EA has influences from many EA methodologies but takes its biggest steer from TOGAF 8.1 and is organised and executed in a SCRUM agile development approach. It’s very accessible from the highly ......
What are the biggest challenges for Governance in the IT space currently? How to start! There really is no definitive manual. Determining the correct structure and processes for you organisation. Achieving buy-in. Getting the right people involved Not to mention cultural change and the list can indeed go on and on. All these topics are discussed at length but I am constantly mystified why one of them isn't tackled and it rates pretty highly and is rarely tackled and that is how decision makers think. ......